22 Feb 2011

Yesterday, I was standing waiting to catch a bus home after a morning in town. I was feeling good about the computer course I'd just started, and I'd treated myself to a quilt magazine, which I was looking forward to reading. I was composing in my head a blog post about why I haven't posted lately - like how I was getting overload from having to write every single day (for NaBloPoMo), which is not easy for me as knowing I have to do something sucks all the fun out of it; or how I was getting so sick and tired of the way my computer shuts down and/or reboots itself at random times, whether I'm using it or not; or how I decided to take a break and just not use the darned thing for several days, which I thought I'd regret, but actually found rather liberating, despite the thought of all the unread emails piling up.

But just as my bus pulled up, the ground shook so bad I had to grab hold of the bus shelter to steady myself, and looked up at the two storey concrete wall beside me, wondering if I should get away from it, or just wait until this aftershock wore itself out, as so many had done already. Had I known what was happening in the centre of the city (9 km away), I would've been across the road in a shot.

But at the time, I assumed this was yet another aftershock from the 7.1 earthquake that hit us on September 4. We'd had hundreds thousands of those, and we hadn't felt a strong one in several weeks.

Long story short: the bus took me home (we live outside the city, in a satellite town), I collected my girls from school (now closed until at least Monday), and hubby arrived a few minutes later. We've been watching TV ever since, stunned at the devastation of so many familiar landmarks and historic buildings. But by far the worst of it is the fatalities - something we miraculously didn't see in September's quake. My heart goes out to those people, their families and friends.